High Seas Learning :: An international cruise line is able to provide overview training to 2000 employees, while they are deployed on ocean voyages

Project: This company needed to train 2000 crew members in safety and health topics within the next six months to obtain certification in OHSAS 18001.

Issues: Both time and budget were very short. The content was not yet developed. Computer access on the ships was very limited, and Internet bandwidth was restricted. The crew members changed ships as often as five times per month, depending upon sailing schedules and vacations. This made it impossible to deploy training per ship because a large percentage of the crew on a ship at any given time had already had the training on another ship.

Solution: Albany Analytical created a course on its own Moodle site, BeeLearn.com, that was very simple, with no pop-ups, flash objects, or other items that would use large amounts of bandwidth. A process of creating generic “seats” in the training was developed; each ship was given 75 training positions, good for 3 weeks. Crew members were told to obtain an id when they had time (on any ship they happened to be on), sign in, enter their unique employee #s, take the course, pass the quiz, and print a certificate. At the end of the three week enrollment period for a ship, another set of ships would be provided usernames. This continued until all employees were trained.

Results: All personnel who were targeted for training received the training in the desired six months. The only time the crew members were “in training” was while they were seated in front of the computer, taking the online course. There was no travel for crews or trainers, no hardware, no software, and very little paperwork. The cost per student was less than half of the lowest price CD-Rom training material.